| April 16th, 2009 |
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Hello, Dreamwidth. Thank you ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) elaran for the invitation!
I think I'm likely to use this as a ficjournal/fandom journal, attached only to my first name so I can have some distance between my full name and my fanfic. For now, at least, I'll leave my regular journal activities at my LJ. (And, hm, I really should remember to update my blog now and then...)
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A while ago, I read this article.
It included this passage:
Although Cambridge University has worked hard to shed its white, middle-class image and take on more multicultural staff and students, only 16 per cent of Cambridge students are from ethnic minority backgrounds and roughly similar levels of staff. The city itself is overwhelmingly white. Official figures from the 2001 census reveal that 91 per cent of the city's population is white British, compared to 87 per cent nationwide, while the black and Asian populations combined make up little more than one per cent.
Dr Oke Odudu, a British-Nigerian law lecturer at Cambridge, said he has never encountered racism during his time there. "The atmosphere of the university is tolerant and the student population is extremely diverse," he said. "I never encountered any discrimination. It's a place where, if you are judged, it's going to be on the basis of academic performance, not your background."
Which is as it should be, regarding the latter point, but the first paragraph bugs me on the dodgy, misleading numbers. Switching the percentages to be running in the same direction:
Cambridge (city): 9% minorities
Britain: 13% minorities
Cambridge University: 16% minorities
So as it happens, I don't think Cambridge is failing in its efforts to be more inclusive, or that Dr Odudu's statement is misleading or covering: Cambridge's percentage of minority-background students is higher than the minority population in Britain. (I don't, by the way, think that this is problematic in the other direction, because a) if you're trying to match exact percentages, it's going to be all bad, and b) overseas students will skew the figures a little - enough for that to seem to me like decent numbers for a genuinely non-racist admissions policy.)
Anti-Oxbridge resentment is no excuse for presenting figures deceptively to make an institution that, on the basis of those figures, is genuinely trying not to be racist look racist.
Also, I wouldn't, personally, call a 4% variation from national average "overwhelming" either. Unless you're saying Britain is overwhelmingly white, in which case... well, can I point out that Britain is one of the few places where white people aren't invading colonisers so much as, you know, the native population? Of course most British people are white.
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Commentary on the Slamball game Chas and I are watching (largely to mock it):
"Hooker's banging every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes by his rim."
Chas laughed at me when I started giggling at that.
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